Is sales purely an art? A person is either good at it, or isn't. There are personal aspects to it that are more art than science, of course, but it is possible to identify best practices for each of your products and each of your buyer personas. This is something we strongly advocate you begin to do, if you haven't already. If you’re going to move revenues to a higher level, it is crucial that you begin to do this. Simply relying on the best judgement of each salesperson isn't enough, as you probably have already identified. Too often, sales is neglected, with each new hire left to fend for themselves, learning primarily through trial and error.
That’s not a good idea. Instead, identify all your buyer personas, and products, and then create a set of metrics that can evaluate what practices help push prospects through the sales funnel, and lead to a sale. The practice will lead to better sales and is at the heart of the newer concept of a “sales playbook.” Sales playbooks have a key role to play in enabling your salespeople. An ideal playbook offers all the information that a salesperson needs to have and share with the prospect when making a sales call.
A sales playbook is a systematic organization of all marketing and sales assets that salespeople need when interacting with their prospects throughout the buyer’s journey. A playbook maps each sales asset to the buyer’s position in the sales cycle. A good sales playbook is like a GPS: it provides the clear directions your salespeople need to reach their ultimate destination—closing a lead.
However, many companies mistake the sales playbook for an asset dump—a folder in the cloud where all the marketing and sales collateral ever created are dumped and shared with the salespeople. It is then left up to the sales team to pick the best asset to share with the prospect as they deem appropriate. Is it a surprise then that their playbooks fail? Effective sales playbooks spell out directions clearly and are designed to help your sales reps get the most out of any situation and be entirely self-reliant. They contain all the assets your salespeople need for each step in the sales process and are scalable, repeatable and dynamic. Playbooks tell your salespeople exactly what to say, when to say it, and how to say it.
You wouldn’t leave on a long trip without a roadmap or a GPS, so why send your sales staff out with no directions?